set Tor/Vidalia to US proxies

Is there anyway to set Tor/Vidalia to US proxies? And pick what network to use? I've been using 'easy hide ip' which lets me do this and I think it is based on Tor and uses it's proxies, but it's a pay subscription.

 

On vidalia menu - click on settings - advanced - click the first browse button - open torrc file with notepad - add these lines on your torrc file then save - restart vidalia:

ExitNodes {us}
StrictExitNodes 1


hope this helps

 

Hi mskmm,

If you live outside the US, the solution given is probably fine. However, since NSA streams all US traffic in some 30-odd sites around the US, most notably the one in a San Francisco AT&T building, then it stands to reason that for the US Tor user - it might be a tad easier to be tagged via traffic analysis given there likely is with time stronger traffic analysis algorithms to spot patterns and identify particular traffic - not that one's traffic would be that interesting unless the are doing something illegal. Just a thought or two to consider.

The question is does a US resident become more susceptible to traffic analysis by specifying akik1337's solution or not? I don't know, as it depends on many variables not under the user's control - but, one thing is clear - that specifying US exit nodes may either make it easier to be analyzed or may not. I would not chance it myself.

-- Tom

 

Would a better solution be to Block bad nodes? How do you block bad tor nodes? I never could find a straight answer to this one?

 

https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq#ChooseEntryExit
You can use IP ranges as well, see the comments here https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-browser-bundle-1112-released for examples.
keyword ExcludeNodes

 

thanks for the help. When I try the edit exit nodes it still gives the same IP. Even clicking new id gives back the same IP. I'll have to play around with it and see if I can get it working. Thanks again.

 

Hi Warlockz,

Bad nodes are easy to block with a forbidden file if you use the polipo proxy with Tor.

Here are the contents of the default forbidden file I installed from the repositories for Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) yesterday:

# Sample forbidden URLs file for polipo. -*-sh-*-
# Put this in /etc/polipo/forbidden or in ~/.polipo-forbidden.

# Forbid all hosts belonging to a given domain name:

#counter.com
#hitbox.com
#doubleclick.net
#www.cashcount.com

# Forbid all hosts contaning a string matching a given regex. Note
# that you need to quote dots, so that a regex is not misinterpreted
# as a domain name.

#^http://[^/]*counter\.com
#/ads/
#/phpAdsNew
#counting\.php

Polipo is the preferred proxy to use with Tor (note: Vidalia is a Tor controller for use in the Gnome environment, like Tork which is more for use on KDE but can be used with Gnome if you can tolerate installing the KDE framework to use it in Gnome). The reasons Polipo is preferred is the it does pipelining whereas no other proxy currently compares that also does pipelining.

The way I bring up everything as a regular user in the KDE environment is:
$ polipo &
$ sudo /etc/init.d/tor start
$ torkify <browser>
$ tork (via the Start icon: Applications>Internet>Tork)

Note: You can also use Privoxy with Polipo by chaining them together - see the document from the polipo website, polipo.pdf. Polipo is available from http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/polipo/.

-- Tom